Some how, I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but all of my email contacts have been erased. So if you haven't heard from me, this is why. To remedy this situation, please email from the address you'd prefer me to maintain contact with you so that I can recreate my contacts as soon as possible. Without it, I feel that my Christmas card correspondence could be irreparably damaged.

I am trying the dating scene once again and really, really hate it. It sucks to meet new people and test the waters with the transplant thing. So far, I have found that by talking about the kidney first, it opens up a good dialogue. Kidneys aren't as scary as other transplants since they're done with such frequency and the surgical aspect isn't quite as daunting. Depending on the response there, I try to slip in the lungs- a much different animal than a run-of-the-mill kidney. Still even with some gentle hints it's a whole different story when it comes down to dealing with the consequences of post-transplant life. Recently, a book was published by Amy Silverstein entitled Sick Girl, and while you might think this is a hopeful, inspirational memoir about a heart transplant recipient and nearly twenty years of post-transplant bliss, you couldn't be more wrong. In fact, the book is the exact opposite. The author mentions the thought of killing herself several times and hates that her transplant has made her sick all these years. I was disgusted upon hearing about the book, that I went out and bought it. While I understand her perspective and similarly, her guilt for not being "thankful", her perspective is still valid. Not everyone that has experienced a transplant shares the same story. In the author's case, her transplant was a necessity by emergency. She didn't have twenty years of progressive debilitation riddled with long hospitalizations. There is a different type of "learning" that one experiences through chronic experience over an acute bout. Essentially, the author had a transplant without a lot of forethought of what life would be like after, without knowledge of how the transplant would consist trade-offs: a economic balance of transaction costs and benefits. If Amy Silverstein had not been in a life or death emergency and had gone through the rigorous work up that most patients have to go through, like a psychological fitness screening, it would be likely that she wouldn't be a candidate at all. SO, wait until it comes out on paperback, or buy is used on Amazon because all and all, it sounds more like a rant of a child than of a woman with 20 plus years to be thankful.

More of my own ranting later....